[OSM-newbies] "Fresh" map

[SomeoneElse]

Peter O'Doherty wrote:
> Hi list,
>
> Is it possible to create a fresh (offline) map of a geographical 
> location, a village or a neighbourhood for example, for use in an 
> educational project where children create the map from scratch (using 
> gps)? As opposed to editing or adding to an already existing map?
>
> Many thanks,
> Peter
>

Something that I've suggested in the past to new mappers to enable them 
to "get the hang of things" prior to editing the live data is the test 
server:

http://api06.dev.openstreetmap.org/

Unless you live somewhere where there's been data testing, there's to be 
likely no data where you're interested in mapping, so it might be a 
possibility.  As a test server there are no service guarantees (and no 
guarantees that all the data won't be wiped at some point in the 
future), so you'd need to be aware of that, and you'd need to render a 
map from the data yourself since there isn't (as far as I'm aware) a 
rendering of the data that's on the api06 dev server anywhere.

Also, it might be worth checking with the server admins in the #osm-dev 
IRC channel to make sure that they were OK with this use of it, but if 
it draws new mappers into the project, I can see benefits of using it 
for this.

Cheers,

Andy